Calgary Real Estate

Twin homes, 100 years apart

Fraternal dwellings Family was determined to renovate country home for growing clan

The new farmhouse was built in 2006, but its style harkens back to the same era as the former inn and stagecoach stop.

Photograph by: Helga Loverseed
, The Gazette

Drivers meandering along Route 247 near Ogden have been known to do a double take. That’s not surprising. Two seemingly identical farmhouses, one behind the other, stand alongside the road. Clad in clapboard with wraparound verandas, these houses, so typical of the Eastern Townships, appear to be exactly the same, but close up they have their own distinct characteristics.

The house closest to the road, a former stagecoach inn, was built in the 1840s. Known as Bodwell Hall, it was a stopover on the Montreal to Boston run and in later years functioned as a post office. The other farmhouse was constructed recently – in 2006 – but its style harks back to the same era as the inn. Today the property is collectively known as the Davis-Kell Farm.

Up until the 1960s, it was a thriving enterprise. Owner Arthur Davis kept dairy cattle, pigs, hens and a team of horses. He also grew mixed crops. After his death in 1972, the family continued to visit the farm, using it as a rural retreat on weekends and during vacations.

In the late 1990s, the present generation, Terry Kell and his sister Linda Keymer, who by then had inherited the property, decided that they would like to renovate their country home. It was still being used a gathering place for the Kell and Keymer clan (25 strong when they’re all together) but they realized the building needed to be renovated.

“We drew up plans to restore the house,” said Terry. “but unfortunately, none of the contractors we approached wanted to do it. They all tried to talk us out of it, because of the cost.”

Kell then approached Alain Bellavance, a well-known Bromont architect who specializes in historic buildings, to ask if he could design a new house, in a style sympathetic to the old one. That was no problem for Bellavance, but unfortunately, another problem lay in wait.

The municipality told Kell that they would have to demolish the old house first, because under the local zoning laws, they were not permitted to have two residences on the same property. Terry and Linda were unwilling to do that for sentimental reasons. The old building held many happy memories for the family.

Happily, a solution to this new dilemma was found. Having mulled over the matter, the municipality informed the Kells that they could keep the old house, provided it was converted into an exhibition space and interpretation centre for private and public events.

Having gotten clearance to proceed with their plans, the family went full steam ahead to construct the new house. To oversee the renovations, Linda Keymer and her husband, Ron, moved back from Texas where they’d worked for over 30 years and Ron, who runs a technical company in Ottawa, commuted on weekends. Between them, they organized a team of artisans, a stonemason and several construction workers, who set the wheels in motion.

“We discovered that the area was full of talented workmen and they became very passionate about the project,” recalled Linda. “They gave us some great suggestions and we would go back and forth with ideas, which just evolved as we went along.”

Since Linda and Terry were starting from scratch, their vision for the new house was to make it as environmentally friendly as possible – even though from the outside it would look old. The woodlot was logged to provide timber (“we cut thousands and thousands of trees”), recycled materials were incorporated wherever possible and huge fieldstones, uncovered when the foundations were being dug, were used to build a wall around the property and the fireplace in the living room – the work of local stonemason Jean d’Arcy.

“If we ever need to go back to living off the land, everything is here,” Terry said. “We have an excellent supply of water. We’ve installed a geothermal heating/cooling system and once solar energy becomes more efficient, we intend to incorporate that as well. We’ve planted crops and built a barn and a greenhouse. In fact, we’re pretty close to being self-sufficient.”

The house is, however, a far cry from a back-to-the-land makeover. Furnished with a mix of contemporary furniture and family heirlooms, it is a 5,500-sq-ft luxury home with an open plan kitchen/dining/living area, a smaller kitchen-cum-pantry, five bedrooms, four bathrooms (and one powder room), a home office and a study. (The original farmhouse is 3,000 sq ft, so this one is much bigger, even though from the outside they look almost the same.)

The living area has floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors trimmed with butternut harvested from another farm. The floorboards came from the former carriage house, as did the wooden beam that serves as a mantelpiece on the fieldstone fireplace.

The kitchen is designed in such a way that lots of people can stand or sit around the work area. According to Terry, the family likes to cook and socialize at the same time, so a priority for them was to install a large countertop, a slab of mellow grey and white marbled soapstone.

“I chose soapstone to give the kitchen counter an antique look,’” explained Linda. “It’s antibacterial, low maintenance – I just have to treat it with mineral oil from time to time – and it tolerates very high heat. You can place a cooking pot on it, directly from the stove at 500ºF!”

Once the house was complete (August 2006), the family turned its attention to transforming the original building into an interpretation centre and rebuilding the carriage house that lies between the two.

The old farmhouse had to be lifted, to construct a new foundation – a stage that led to some trepidation about what might be revealed. To their relief, the family discovered that the structure was actually quite sound and while some sills had to be replaced and support beams added to the basement, there was very little to do, other than repair the walls.

When you walk into the renovated building, a pleasant, earthy odour emanates from the interior. It comes from the new walls, which are made of American clay sourced from Albuquerque, New Mexico, by Linda, who is fond of this fragrant organic material.

Since restoring the former inn, the family has staged several exhibitions and art shows, most notably “Art and the Automobile/l’Art et l’automobile, which drew visitors from across Canada, the United States and Europe. Held in the fall of 2008, it showcased luxury vehicles and their designers, as well as the work of well-known Townships artists such as Louise Abbott, a documentary film maker, and her husband, Niels Jensen, a master cabinetmaker.

The reconstructed carriage house has been repurposed as a meeting place for small groups and corporate events. It incorporates planks and hand-hewn beams from the original building and the front, which faces Route 247, is clad in 19th-century-style wooden siding. The back, however, is ultra-modern. Walls of glass and steel look out over the surrounding countryside – an innovative design that blends the old and new architecture of the Davis-Kell Farm.

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